Stratus Technologies, Inc. announced today that it is the infrastructure design and technology consultant for a new electronic payments processing network being developed by Strategic Payments Services Pty Ltd (SPS).
SPS is a joint venture between Bendigo Bank Limited, a leading regional bank with more than 310 branches throughout Australia, and Customers Ltd, a publicly listed payments business and one of Australia's largest merchant ATM operators.
"As a new entrant to the processing market with state-of-the-art infrastructure and network, SPS will be ideally positioned to quickly deliver new client services over a broad array of channels and devices," said Ron Hill, head of technology for SPS. "SPS looked to Stratus' expertise to design and implement the payments infrastructure."
The SPS joint venture will improve cost and time to market for new capabilities, as well as provide competitive options for the marketplace. It intends to achieve this by building its own technological platform to drive ATMs and point-of-sale terminals and by utilizing the MasterCard switch to provide the links to other financial institutions in the Australian market. "The SPS initiative represents a significant step forward in the Australian payments market at a time of ATM deployer consolidation and regulatory reforms affecting EFT/POS. Stratus is pleased to be part of this exciting project," said Philip Izzo, Stratus director financial services.
Initially Stratus will supply four fault-tolerant Stratus ftServer 4600 systems with 99.999 percent uptime reliability to drive network devices in this mission-critical, Windows-based business operation. In addition Stratus will provide the infrastructure design to ensure the availability extends out to the network.